After a 10 year hiatus, Amma Asante is back with a bang with her highly praised film Belle, about the 18th century mixed race aristocrat Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay. Originally trained as an actor when young, Asante appeared in well known TV dramas such as Grange Hill, Desmond’s and Birds of a Feather. In her late teens she left acting and became a scriptwriter and director, starting with the urban drama Brothers and Sisters on BBC2.
In 2004 her debut feature A Way of Life, which she directed, picked up countless awards, including the Alfred Dunhill UK Film Talent Award and the BAFTA Carl Foreman Award for Special Achievement by a Writer/Director in a debut film. As with her first film, Belle tackles issues of class, gender and race and, once again, has a strong female lead. She tells Joy Francis why she decided to direct Belle, the importance of being a visible black female director, why Kathryn Bigelow and Oprah Winfrey are among her heroines and her jitters about her next project, a thriller for Warner Bros.
Firstly, congratulations on Belle. How does it feel being back in the UK and seeing it on the big screen in London after its US release?
Before our interview I was about to send a tweet saying how proud I am to be back in London on the eve of the film’s opening as the film is about who you allow to define you – those in society or yourself. I understand this as it has taken me time to define myself as Black British.
What made you decide to direct Belle?
Belle came to me in the form of a postcard with a print of the portrait featuring Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, which was sent by my producer Damian Jones. It made me want to tell a story and make a film about this woman, a Black Brit like me. Damian had been trying to get a film off the ground about Dido for a long time. By the time he came to me he was ready to start again. It took three more years of work to get the story clear. When I looked at the painting, I saw a combination of politics, art, history and race. I’m fascinated by that period, particularly women’s experiences at that time, and people of colour. We have been here much longer than the Windrush. Our stories deserve to be told.
Directing a film about a historical character unknown to many has its risks. What was it about this story that made you think it could be translated in a way that would be compelling to cinemagoers?
The wonderful thing about a great piece of art is that it can inspire and evoke. I was captured by how Dido is positioned in the painting, how Elizabeth is resting on her and her value as a woman of colour. I saw a girl that was loved by her white counterpart. I wondered who commissioned the painting and thought that it took a lot of courage and love to do that. When I started to do the research I wanted to find out more about Lord Mansfield [who commissioned the painting]. It took me months to learn about him, the complexity of the man and previous legal judgements he had made that were thoughtful in destabilising the idea of slavery. I felt this was a man who also loved Dido paternally. I didn’t want Belle to be a Cinderella story, where she comes into a house and the sister figure hated her, leaving her to strive for acceptance. I wanted it to be a house where she was loved but as the only one of colour in the family, having to show people the right way to love her. I wanted to show a woman who was privileged but not equal. How do you deal with this situation as a black person in 18th century England when most other black people outside of Africa at the time were enslaved, yet you are asking for more from society? You have to be very honest with yourself and say, who would I be if I was living in that time? How would I feel? Would my blackness feel like an asset or a hindrance?
The cast is impressive, with familiar and new faces. What part did you play in the casting process and did you have any specific actors in mind, such as Tom Wilkinson and Miranda Richardson?
I had everything to do with casting and yes, absolutely I had actors in mind. Tom was my first choice for Lord Mansfield, once I had cast Gugu [Mbatha-Raw] which was after an extensive search. I knew Gugu but I had to see if she was ready to carry the film – and she was. Tom was no brainer. He was my muse when I was putting everything together. As for Miranda, I am in love with her. We cast her in what seems like a lighter character than some of the rest, but she is not. I saw Miranda in the film Damage and I knew, at some point, I had to meet this woman. She doesn’t disappoint. Her character is actually based on my ex mother-in-law who was a Chelsea woman. When I first met her I overheard her saying to her son: “Well she is quite pretty but she is very black. I didn’t expect her to be quite so black.” I was 20. What do you say in that situation? As a 20 year old I had a mixture of feelings and didn’t know if I should let her know I could hear her, or to let the man who was to be my husband know what I had heard. Now I’m in a place where I feel strong. We don’t hear these views presented in such a genteel way on screen, like in [Jane] Austen’s world. I wanted to go there as it would have been disingenuous for me to not mention a truth, and that would have been her experience.
Why do you think that there have been a number of historical films, such as The Butler and 12 Years A Slave, showing different and far less conventional perspectives on slavery and racism over the past year?
It is starting behind the screen and behind the camera. People [of colour] are slowly breaking into positions where they can make that type of decision. If you think about 12 Years A Slave and The Butler, we are all black filmmakers who have chosen main protagonists who are black. They are not passive observers in their own world but are active protagonists in their own world. This is why you are getting a different kind of story on the screen. There is no reason why this story wasn’t told from Lord Mansfield’s point of view with Dido being passive to him and just observing what he did. The original story from Damian [Jones, the producer] was a 50/50 story between Dido and Elizabeth. To me, if you cover up Dido in the painting it just becomes ordinary. When you show Dido, the picture becomes interesting, which is why I put her front and centre. It is her story.
Female directors are thin on the ground. As for black ones – send out a search party. With your visibility as a black female director, what impact do you hope to make?
It’s good that you speak about women as well as women of colour as the struggle for women has been a big one in the film industry. When you then extend that to women of colour, it is just ridiculous. There are many years between my first film [A Way of Life] and Belle. I’m in a privileged position as I have won a BAFTA Award, but in another way I cannot negate the problems that race and gender have brought and why it has taken so long to get my second film off the ground. Having the presence of women like Oprah Winfrey, Debbie Allen and Shonda Rhimes made me know it was possible to have a career. They have hung in there and weren’t overnight successes. They showed me it was possible. There are also other women who aren’t black who I look to for inspiration like Kathryn Bigelow. My father was dying when I was making the film and I went to see her film Zero Dark Thirty. It was one moment of relief where I could do something that wasn’t about Belle. Zero Dark Thirty had me at the edge of my seat. I wondered if I would ever be able to direct like that while the other side of me was thinking, this is brilliant. I’m so glad I’m doing what I’m doing. Having some kind of profile within the film industry and piercing the consciousness of the film going public is important. Women have inspired me and I hope to be able to do the same.
In the film’s production notes it is suggested that very little is known about Dido’s love interest John Davinier, apart from a few official documents. How did you balance fact and fiction in Belle?
The information is out there. There have been short movies on her story and a radio play. Somebody has done an all black theatre play about it. There was no quintessential book that told her story so you had to research the information and pull it all together, which is what I did. We decided that there needed to be a book on Dido so we commissioned a companion book to the film, published by HarperCollins and written by the wonderful Paula Byrne. In reality John Davinier was not a lawyer. I decided to turn him into a lawyer as I wanted to explore the two sides of the question in relation to the Zong [the slave ship] to make people understand that you could make money out of killing slaves and claiming on the insurance. I put the legal in Lord Mansfield and the moral in John. I learnt about Lord Mansfield as a young man in Scotland. His family became property rich and cash poor. The political opposition had fined his family. He came to London to make his fortune and got his peers in the legal profession to take him under their wing, like he did with John in the film. I took Lord Mansfield’s story as a young man and supplanted it on John; elements of fiction that would support the history rather than make a mockery of it. Regarding the fictional elements of Dido – history shows Lord Mansfield as the active character. He is the one who takes her in and adopts her. He commissions the painting. He is the one who makes the legal judgement on the Zong. My decision was to make her active in her world. As I said before, who defines you – society or yourself? I was 33 when I defined myself as a Black Brit. My parents are from Ghana. Depending on where I was, I was being told, you aren’t African, you are English, or you are English, you are not African. It was a question of who I would have been in Dido’s world. The relationship between Dido and Lord Mansfield is very similar to the one I had with my father, and the relationship between Dido and Elizabeth is like the one with my older sister. My father would tell me, no matter what goes on outside the front door and no matter the racism out there, know that you are loved. I took elements of history and elements of my own world to tell the story.
Will we have to wait another 10 years before we see your artistry on screen?
I really hope not. I got the scariest of calls from Warner Bros who want me to direct Unforgettable [working title], a thriller set for release next year. After a 10 year hiatus I am going to jump on the opportunities.
Any advice for budding filmmakers, particularly of colour?
It is really simple. Choose a project you love and be very honest with the characters and the world you are creating. Don’t be afraid to reach from inside of yourself and your own life to create those characters. The biggest piece of advice I would give is to be tenacious and keep the faith. Know it is a comma and not a full stop.
Belle is on national release from Friday 13 June 2014.